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Datadog vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
1st
Ranking in Log Management
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (3rd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), AI Observability (1st)
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
37th
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
25th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
20th
Ranking in Log Management
41st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (14th), Configuration Management (21st), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 2.2%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.1%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog2.2%
WhatsUp Gold2.1%
Other95.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Our ROI with Datadog has been very high."
"Datadog has a very good visualization for my complete infrastructure and network traffic, which enabled me to create a capacity plan."
"The most valuable feature of Datadog is its logs, as we can use the logs to conduct analysis and root cause analysis."
"We use the application for our application monitoring, data security monitoring, and log management, and it helps us to track issues proactively instead of reactively."
"When I reflect on the ways we used to track down issues, I can't imagine how we ever managed before Datadog."
"Datadog is providing efficiency in the products we develop for the wireless device engineering department."
"I like Datadog because it is so easy use, I can easily connect to public clouds, and I have a view of observability."
"Datadog's ability to group and visualize the servers and the data makes it relatively easy for the root cause analysis."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"The most important features of WhatsUp Gold are the server health and uptime it provides. Additionally, WhatsUp Gold is a Windows-based solution which is a benefit."
"The visual map and email alerts are very useful to have in real time so we always know the state of our network."
"The product is reasonably priced."
"The most valuable feature of WhatsUp Gold is NetFlow and the virtualized maps."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
"Overall, we have been satisfied with the functionality of the product."
"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see more advanced incident management capabilities integrated directly into the platform."
"Datadog can be improved because sometimes it seems it has not been developed for enterprises."
"There are some areas on log filtering screens where the user interface can take some getting used to."
"In the past two years, there have been a couple of outages."
"The product needs to have more enterprise approach to configuration."
"The PagerDuty integration could be a little bit better."
"The user interface is okay, but sometimes cost is the issue because for logging, I had to actually trim down my logs because the cost is too much."
"Could be a little more user friendly."
"The price could be improved. When we first started using this product, the company was new. The prices were very low then, in comparison with HP OpenView or IBM, but now the policy is too high, relative to the number of devices we have."
"The point system is not clear and clarity around this would improve our understanding of the system."
"The technical support does not bother to respond."
"The interface needs some work."
"We can never achieve or get a good picture of the network topology."
"I would like to see better integration with switches so that you can see what is connected to each port, what the traffic is, and have a network map automatically generated."
"This product should add other options for monitoring. It does not currently meet the broader needs of the banking industry in the version we have deployed."
"My understanding is that there are better products out there that do a better job."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
"This is a well priced solution."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"There is a license needed to use WhatsUp Gold."
"The pricing can be on the expensive side when considering competing products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise100
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.